Let There Be Light, Part 1

“The first post is always the hardest.”

I don’t even know why I put that in quotations; I’ve never heard anyone say that, and I’m pretty sure that every post will have it’s own gut-wrenching challenges. I am hoping that this will be the first of many though, and my desire is that at the end of it all, you will be left with a yearning for something better, something more… or at least this would have not been a total bore.

Like my fellow writers, I am writing from a Christian perspective, and so every thought will (hopefully) be instructed by the Word of God, the holy Bible. That being said, I will strive to make these posts as accessible as possible, so hopefully there will be minimal Christian-ese and it’ll be more of a down-to-earth kinda thing.

The thought for this post came up when I was listening to a sermon by Matt Chandler from the Village Church’s ‘I Am’ sermon series, and Matt was dealing with John 8:12, and during the sermon, he made this statement that stuck with me:

‘You’ve never opened up your door at night and had darkness flow into your house. You’ve opened up your door, and light shone out of it. This is what Jesus does.’ – Matt Chandler

Well, of course not! Wouldn’t it be weird if you had a light on in your house, and when you opened the door, the darkness came and snuffed your light out? I suppose if you had a naked candle lit and there was a gust of wind or something, but that would have been the wind, not the darkness… But I digress…

The focus of this post is how light bearers are not overcome by darkness, but how they extinguish the darkness wherever they are (or go). To make it an easier read, I will split it into three parts, with this being the first.

One of the things/characteristics/attributes often associated with God is light. According to God’s revelation of Himself in the holy Bible, His glory is so blinding that no man may nonchalantly see it and live (for example, see Exodus 33:18-23; Isaiah 6:1-5). He is the One that created the sun, moon and stars, i.e. the natural lights we have around us (for example, see Genesis 1:14-19; Isaiah 40:26). He is called the ‘Father of Lights’ in whom there is no variation or change (James 1:17).

Above all these, however, He is more famously known for uttering the words that we Christians believe to be the beginning of all things:

“Let there be light.” (Genesis 1:3)

Fast forward from then, mankind whom God created in His own image for intimate fellowship and uprightness decided instead to go our own way, to serve our own things, and to be our own god. But oh dear reader, our hearts were made for so much more. Our souls yearn for so much more. And the vain attempt to satisfy this longing (and the unfortunate circumstances of our futile attempts) can be seen all around us. Granted, you can probably mention some things that you can still call beautiful, but largely speaking, there is a growing darkness in the world.

“mankind whom God created in His own image for intimate fellowship and uprightness decided instead to go our own way, to serve our own things, and to be our own god.”

All the heartbreak. All the frustration. All the “evil”; I don’t believe that any point of view with any shred of humanity or morality would disagree that there is something wrong with us (I say ‘us’ because I am in no way inherently better than anyone else, and our general concept of “good” is unfortunately just a measure of what degree of “evil” we’re involved in by comparison to someone else).

While I expect most people to agree on our current state (i.e. there is something wrong), where perspectives tend to differ is when answering the questions, “what is the cause?”, and “how do we fix it?”

We will carry on this thought and address those questions in the next post. The link will be available here when it is published. Until then!